Memes aren’t what they used to be. What was once shared and participatory, now seems to be increasingly top down and audience driven. Look at Grumpy Cat: meme turned brand. Even the doge meme, as charming as it was, seemed to be angling towards something more commercial in nature. It’s expected at this point that a meme becomes something you’ll see at a SXSW booth inevitable. It’s been such a sad state of affairs for good, bottom-up egalitarian pop culture memes that TLF decided to skip our yearly recap of favorite memes in 2013.

Enter the Hail Hydra meme. First off, the best thing about the “Hail Hydra” is meme is how seemingly random it is. Inspired by a brief scene in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, where a secondary characters leans over and whispers “Hail Hydra” in evil solidarity. It’s not a throwaway scene, but not an iconic one either. And yet, the evening after I saw the film, I saw this on Twitter:

then this on Facebook:

then this on G+:

In Limor Shifman’s book, Memes in Digital Culture (reviewed here) Shifman presents the idea of the three factors that facilitate the spread of viral and memetic content: 1.) simplicity, 2.) humor and 3.) access to tools of participation. Its been very long time since I’ve seen a meme, a simple, humorous, non-commercial meme, grow so quickly and on so many platforms in real time. Probably the last time it happened was the “Binders Full of Women meme of 2012. It actually made me nostalgic, if you will, for a simpler time on the Internet, where memes played more of a role of common language or in-joke within a community than potential brand platform. Memes were born, circulated widely and quickly, and died before overstaying their welcome. It was… refreshing to see something so clever, participatory and (seemingly) random happen online from fans of the movie just having fun.

As online culture become more and more audience-centric, organized, and top-down, I wonder if moments like this are now the exception rather than the rule. I admit, I even wondered if the meme itself was orchestrated by Paramount or Marvel as some kind of viral marketing push, because that’s where we are at now. I don’t think it is, though I would not at all be surprised if it isn’t. Either way, the fact that I don’t know begs the question how much room is left for participatory fan culture in a hyper-branded online world.

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Memes in Digital Culture by Limor Shifman is another great addition to the MIT Press Essential Knowledge Series. This book doesn’t dive the deepest, but it lays out all of the important issues well enough for anyone to understand why memes are so sticky — from a college student to an interested grandparent in why kids these days are making wacky cat videos.

Shifman spends the time in this short volume describing what is the difference between memes and virality:

Viral comprises a single cultural unit (such as a video, photo, or joke) that propagates in many copies, an Internet meme is always a collection of texts. … A single video is not an Internet meme but part of a meme – one manifestation of a group of texts that together can be described as the meme. … mememic content is … a living and changing entity that is incorporated in the body and mind of its hosts.

One of the best sections details the value of memes politically, including political participation. There are three significant ways memes have political impact: as political advocacy; as grassroots action – pulling together people who would otherwise not necessarily work together; and as a way of sharing one’s political opinions. And there is an additional value for memes within nondemocratic societies – as democratic subversion.

While the book does a great job of covering memes from a communications/media perspective, there is nary a mention of the impact of law, including copyright. The lack of mention of copyright is especially noteworthy considering that while there are a few word & picture meme examples in the book, some of the most discussed memes are videos, videos that are mentioned without direct links – and considering present YouTube Content ID takedowns, many of the examples mentioned may already not be available – and are likely to be less available in the future.

Finally, the final flaw in this introductory text is a lack of analysis on the differential aspects of memes regarding subcultures and cross-culturally. There is both a chapter on global memes and a discussion of Gangnam Style, but I wanted more – likely not possible in such a short guide, however.
Overall Summary: Memes in Digital Culture is a great overview of the impact of memes in online culture. Other recommended books I’ve read in the series include Open Access by Peter Suber & Intellectual Property by John Palfrey, so I hope the series continues to add more these important brief summaries.

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The Learned Fangirl has existed for six years! We wanted to take a moment to look at our history and share our future plans aloud. Because saying it aloud makes it real.

TLF: The Early Years

The Learned Fangirl started off as an off-shoot of Keidra’s personal blog, Enjoy and Exciting, (now retired) which ended up evolving into more of a music/pop culture blog by the end of its tenure, and also based on Keidra and Raizel’s respective fandom interests and our respect and admiration for the work of scholar Henry Jenkins. While we still write about fandom and fan culture, one of the most important (and little-known) inspirations for TLF was our “award” winning Gundam Wing parody fan-fiction (that thankfully can’t be found on the Internet anymore.)

We were both involved in fandom on varying levels, and at the time, there were not a lot of blogs that explored fandom and internet fan culture in a smart (or at least non-derisive) way.

Many of the blogs that we read and admired during those early years have shuttered. After all, doing this type of writing — not for pay, but still meant for a general audience — can sometimes be rewarding in punctuated equilibrium. Due to work and personal lives (we haz them!), there have been some months during the dark era, where we posted a couple of times a month, if we were lucky.

Putting on our big-girl panties
But TLF has survived — and flourished. A couple of years ago, we decided to invite contributing and guest writers, allowing for a diversity of voices and interest, and made the first concerted steps towards becoming a true online publication, beyond the status of a semi-professional blog. We started to focus more broadly on writing about online culture, technology, media, law — especially intellectual property, in addition to fan culture.

It’s our hope, our mission, actually, to focus on unique perspectives on pop culture, technology, and fandom: especially from women, people of color, LGBT, those with disabilities, and those at the intersection of all, whose voices are too frequently ignored or marginalized during conversations around technology and culture. To be blunt, we know that women, POC, LGBT, and beyond have opinions about something other than their own representation within a subculture, and we want to feature them. In the words of Lion-O from Thundercats, “Intersectionality, Ho!”

At the same time, we don’t believe there’s a particular party line when it comes to the perspectives of underrepresented groups, and we’re not interested in cultivating a singular voice or perspective around any topic or sub-culture. We are old-school in our approach to online writing and discourse, and even though there’s not a lot of anecdotal evidence to support our faith in civil, respectful online discourse, we still believe in it and want to create a space where opinion isn’t shouted down or shamed.

The future of TLF
And we want to broaden our focus further. Considering the recent Scientific American blog cluster!@#$ involving racism, sexual harassment, what is “real” science, and the FUTURE of journalism, we want to specifically reach out to those who want to write about STEAM-related issues here. We define STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art/Design and Math) very broadly, to include everyone from lab-coat scientists, to social scientists, to game theorists, to those in new fields, like digital measurement. So if you use spreadsheets or percentages or think about sample sizes in your bidnezz and want to write here about your experiences, we welcome your thoughts! (e-mail us at learnedfangirl [at] the mail from google)

In the past year, we’ve done a lot: Presented at the MIT Media in Transition Conference (for the third time!), brought on five new contributors, hitting a few web traffic milestones and got a snazzy redesign. (Thanks to Alvin Black III and Elaine Griffin!).

We added Viv Obarski as our Production Editor. Keidra and Raizel will continue as Founding/Managing Editors.

We’re seeking to pay our contributors. We appreciate all that our writers have done here and want to be able to monetarily appreciate them as well. Of course, that requires a funding model and we’re trying to figure out what model is most appropriate for what we do.

We are planning to expand into other media and formats. Podcasting, longer-form journalistic writing: there’s more we’d like to do that’s best supported by other media and we’re planning to do more along those lines.

TLF has been a source of creative freedom – and oddly enough – stability in the past six years. Thanks you, readers, for taking the time to check us out, and many thanks to our fantastic contributors in the past six years: Vivian Obarski, Kristin Bezio, Heather Ash, Sophia Madana, Laura Fletcher, Laura Jung, Laura Nash (see a trend here?) Lauriean Davis, Cheryl Collins, Corrin Bennett-Kill, Sam Ford, and Clarissa Simon. We’re just counting the years till TLF is old enough for a drink.

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TLF is back with our top memes of 2012. This is a carefully curated list of memes that make us LOL, so sorry, you’re not going to find Overly Attached Girlfriend or Ridiculously Photogenic Guy. Here our list from last year, and don’t forget to check out Sophia’s post about political memes from the election, including binders of women.

McKayla is Not Impressed
In a brief moment during the Olympics this year, McKayla Maroney flashed a “hell no” face on the winners stand and a funny meme (with a much longer shelf life than a box of Wheaties) was born. She was not hearing that sass talk — or any other negative talk from anyone. Even the commander-in-chief took time to re-enact the moment of less-than-stellar sportsmanship. Isn’t it funny that *this* is what a world-class athlete will likely be remembered for? Even so, cheers to McKayla for approaching the potentially endorsement-killing media criticism with a sense of humor. – KDC and RL

Texts from Hilary / Hilary and Meryl BFFs 4everHilary Clinton was part of two hilarious memes this year. Yes, when I think of Secretaries of State, memes are the first thing to come to mind. First, #texts from Hillary used the same shot of Secretary Clinton on her phone to convey the idea that Hillary Clinton is a true badass who doesn’t take stupid behavior from anyone. Part of what made this meme hilarious was its believability. Then later in the year, a less known meme that mostly just showed pictures of Clinton with Meryl Streep, an unexpected set of BFFs. Hey, if Mindy Kaling can launch a career starting with writing real person fanfic about best friends, why can’t these two powerful women be part of one of the best memes of the year? — RL

Grumpy Cat Back in September, a posting to Reddit spawned one of the most endearing (and annoyed) memes of the year. Grumpy Cat grumpily won hearts and became the meme of choice for Internet curmudgeons with her perpetual frown. Why is Grumpy Cat so great? Well, it’s obvious. She gets to be the asshole we all want to be sometimes – saying the things that we want to say when we’re in a bad mood and someone gets in our grill with their “good cheer.” Grumpy Cat actually isn’t grumpy, I’ve heard, but let’s not mess with her mystique. I enjoy thinking that Grumpy Cat is out there, holding it down every day for all of us who have to force a fake smile when we don’t want to. – KDC

Condescending Wonka On a similar note, Condescending Wonka allows internet users to cross that fine line of snarky commentary without being pegged as “that asshole” on the internet. Condescending Wonka seemed to reach the height of popularity during Election season, when sharing one’s political opinion via social media was a one-way ticket to Flame War City. Condescending Wonka allowed people to share what was on their mind while deflecting the conversation with humor while also hiding behind the smug visage of Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka. (let’s admit it, Wonka was kind of a dick.) – KDC

Ermahgerd On the other end of the enthusiasm spectrum is Ermahgerd, a meme that started by poking fun at a rather embarassing moment of pre-adolescent joy (and the presumed use of a retainer) and evolved into a sincere expression of incomprehensible Internet excitement. Ermahgerd has been used in the most unlikely places, like promotion of the latest Pig Destroyer album, and has even inspired its own language translator. – KDC

Binders of Women
Like last year, our final best meme of the year is a political one. Unlike last year’s Herman Cain, a living breathing internet meme, this one truly came out of left field. A meme from a statement during a presidential debate? One that took off immediately?!? This meme struck a chord with many who believed that their concerns were being tokenized as “women’s issues.” And it was so ridiculous and hilarious, and hopefully dispelled the notion that feminists don’t have a sense of humor. (Warning: Many feminists have a sense of humor that includes Lisa Frank stickers). -RL